1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a riding-type mower that has a mower deck housing a plurality of blades. More specifically, the present invention relates to a riding-type mower having an improved device that supports the mower deck from a traveling body.
2. Related Art
A conventional riding-type mower is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 11-332346. This riding-type mower has a mower unit housing three laterally parallel blades rotationally driven about a vertical axis in a mower deck. The mower unit is liftably supported below a traveling body via draft links at the front and lift links at the rear. With this device, a balance arm is swingably provided about an axis extending in a fore-and-aft direction at a position on the rear upper surface of the mower deck, with left and right points of the balance arm being coupled to left and right lift links.
With a riding-type mower of the above structure, the mower unit is suspendingly supported to be rollable relative to the traveling body. Thus even if the traveling body inclines relative to the ground due to the wheels on one side sinking into the ground more than the wheels on the other side, the positioning of the mower unit which rolls relative to the traveling body is corrected to be parallel with the ground, enabling any difference in lateral cutting height to be suppressed. However, the introduction of the balance arm results in significant protrusion above the mower deck, restricting the amount of lift of the mower unit because of interference between the traveling body and the structure protruding above the mower deck.
There is a danger when the amount of lift of the mower unit is limited of undulations in the ground hitting the mower unit and the mower unit being damaged. Securing a large amount of lift of the mower unit is thus desired.
Particularly with a configuration in which the mower unit is driven by arranging a transmission shaft that spans from a mid PTO shaft provided at the lower rear of the traveling body to an input case on the upper surface of the mower deck of the mower unit, the transmission shaft relatively approaches the upper surface of the mower deck when the mower is lifted up. With the provision of the balance arm for supporting the mower unit as described above, the amount of lift of the mower unit is further constricted due to interference between this balance arm and the transmission shaft.